Seiten

Dienstag, 11. Dezember 2012

Syria and the AKP by Memet Kilic, MdB

Dear Readers,

The summer months saw many heated
developments in the Middle East, and recently it has been Syria at the centre
of these developments.As part of the special topic of this month's
issue I wanted to evaluate these developments from the point of view of
international politics as well as from that of the AKP (Justice and Development
Party) government in Turkey.

To intervene or not to intervene?Is that the question?

Clashes in Syria between the rebels and
the Assad regime are growing in violence every day.While the country is burning in the
flames of civil war, neither Germany nor other European countries look
favourably upon military intervention.If we bear in mind that things did
not go to plan in Afghanistan and that intervention in Iraq not only had no
legitimate grounds from the beginning but also brought about a long and bloody
chaos, this reluctance is not hard to understand.The preference for non-military
alternatives becomes even more understandable when we look at the matter from
the perspective of domestic policy, and consider the upcoming federal elections
in Germany.

On the other hand, because of the absence
of sanctions due to the will, or more precisely the lack of will, of the West, for
months Syria has been displaying, with the utmost ruthlessness, exactly what a
cruel dictator is capable of.

In recent days, the civil war in
Syria has spread to the country’s capital, Damascus.Some experts claim that since the
rebels control a larger area than the Assad regime does, the situation has
reached a turning point.Even if this claim is true, there are concerns
that clashes, massacres and the exodus of Syrians will continue for months.According
to figures from the United Nations, the civil war has so far caused 15,000
deaths – the same as in the war in Libya, where intervention took place despite
the Russian and German veto.As Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, said in February, “Egypt
was not Tunisia; Bahrain was not Egypt; Yemen was not Bahrain; Libya was not
Yemen. And Syria is very definitely not Libya.”

Still, it must be stated that even
though the West has not taken any military action against events in Syria, it
has not remained completely silent.For over a year Western politicians
have been increasingly expressing their demands to Assad.But Assad, as
the saying goes, turns a blind eye.Faced with the situation in Syria, the
politics of the West seem to be radical in terms of discourse but ineffective
in terms of action.What’s more, the UN’s attempts at conciliation
go no further than ineffective war diplomacy.

All of this does not, of course,
prove that intervention in Syria would be more appropriate than
non-interventionand it is impossible to ignore the blood and
tears that international military intervention would bring.However,
when faced with the brutal realities of life, there is nothing to be gained
from excuses.Those who choose non-intervention must accept the fact that the events
that would take place following an illegitimate or unsuccessful military
invasion may well still occur without any intervention.

The clashes in Syria are becoming
increasingly violent and the number of deaths is growing every day.The West’s
position as a helpless observer, along with the powerlessness of the UN to put
an end to the situation only works in favour of the dictator Assad.Since the
possibility of a solution through the UN has been prevented by the vetoes of
China and Russia, the German government claims that military intervention would
bring the situation to an impasse and, to demonstrate its reaction, has been
increasing its cooperation with the group known as the Friends of the Syrian
People.

Furthermore, it wants China and Russia to abandon their protection of
Assad. It wants Assad to be tried in the international criminal court, and frequently
accuses him of having committed genocide and war crimes.But as Germany
is not as close to the region as Turkey, it takes on no responsibility beyond sending
messages of good faith and calling for an end to the violence.I will give
two examples of this. Firstly, Claudia Roth, co-chair of Alliance 90/The Greens,
recently called upon the German government to accept Syrian refugees into the
country.There is currently a reluctance towards accepting refugees from Syria,
and the government, stating that such a move would not be appropriate at this
point, makes do with giving financial support to refugees in other countries.Secondly, in
a recent newspaper interview Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle
said that he approached US-Turkey talks on establishing a no-fly zone over
Syria with caution, or even with reluctance, due to the possibility of the
violence spreading to the entire region (Tagesspiegel,
19 August 2012).

However, regardless of what the foreign powers
want, an extremely important issue is what kind of government the opponents of
the regime and the Syrian people want.In developing countries, and
moreover in countries that are undergoing a new series of political
developments, foreign intervention usually has disastrous effects.For this
reason the people of Syria must be able to freely choose how they want to be
governed and this choice should not be subject to the will of foreign powers
and their interests.

Show me your interests and I'll show you your strategic partner

The US wants to prevent the spread
of Islamist regimes because it sees them a threat in the same way as it did communism
during the Cold War. In a very similar way to the containment plan of the Cold
War, this war is turning into a symbolic struggle involving the interests of
the US and Russia (Eric Reissler, August 2012).

Today Turkey, just like many other
countries such as the US, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, has investments in
Syria.These countries are therefore competing to influence the outcome of the
civil war there.In the current situation, a regime that
includes Assad cannot realistically be expected to secure stability for the
country again. It is obvious that the US, with the lessons it learned from Iraq
and Afghanistan, favours a stable and secular regime and will not support an
extremist Islamic regime.On the other hand, we should not expect the
Islamic fundamentalist groups fighting alongside the rebel forces to renounce
their interests if (or more likely when) a new regime is established.

Because of its proximity to the
region, the great powers of world politics are in close consultation with
Turkey.There is no doubt that telephone
conversations between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan include discussions of the form that the new regime in Syria will take.Similarly,
we know that Minister Westerwelle, the driving force of the EU, and his Turkish
counterpart Ahmet Davutoğlu are discussing the same topic.The US
wants to contain the spread of Islamic fundamentalist regimes in Syria (and in
fact in the whole world) and views radical Islam as a threat similar to that of
the spread of the “enemy” of communism during the Cold War.The AKP
regime is the most acceptable form for the US in a state regime that includes
secular elements.

Germany, on the other hand, sees
Saudi Arabia as a strategic partner and therefore finds itself opposing the
Syrian government.We can identify three main reasons for this.Firstly, in
a time of tense relations between Iran and the West, Saudi Arabia puts an end
to the West’s concerns about energy supply by promising to produce more petrol.Secondly,
Saudi Arabia buys weapons from Germany beyond what it really needs to protect itself
(the purchase of 200 Leopard tanks was really a request for support in the
opposition of Syria).Finally, Saudi Arabia gives information to
Western intelligence services.

Furthermore, the German police force
provides training for Saudi border police,and Saudi border protection
technology has been exported from Germany.Although the news that German police
received salary payments from the Saudi king through the Franco-German weapons
company EADS put the German Federal Ministry of the Interior in a difficult
position for a while, in reality it changed nothing. (Peter Blechschmidt, “Hart
an der Grenze”, Süddeutsche Zeitung,
14 July 2011).

The violent suppression of the Arab
Spring by “trained” Saudi police in neighbouring (Shiite) Bahrain and the
continued pressure on and torture of the opposition there has not led to any
international protest.

If we look at this situation from a
German point of view it can be summarised as follows:if we have to choose between two
undemocratic regimes, we prefer to support the richest one and the one that can
buy the most weapons from us.

Turkish domestic policy also comes
into play of course and I will touch on this in more detail below.

The chosen ones, those chosen
as leaders of the holy war, shall remain unaffected by the storms of this world.

The AKP handles the begging bowl

Knowing that installing missile
shields in Malatya would be difficult to explain to its own voters, the AKP
played the Jewish enemy card in order to change the political agenda, saying
that Turkish warships would escort future aid flotillas to Gaza.One month
after this announcement, an aid ship destined for Gaza was pulled over by
Israeli security forces, causing international unease.However, the Turkish government
chose to ignore the situation, turning this sense of unease into one of surprise.

During the month of Ramadan, fearing
its voters’ preoccupation with how the people of Gaza would break their fast,
the AKP turned the persecution of Muslims in the Burmese state of Rakhine, a
much easier area to reach, into state propagandaand produced advertising campaigns using
tax revenues.This is an example of the methods used by the AKP in running its
policies and of how it routinely uses smoke screens to shape the political
agenda.

The AKP is now known internationally
for using this tactic.Many factors should be taken into account in
the debate over Syria and the stance of Turkey.Experts on the Middle East, with
whom I discussed this issue, point out that as well as the subject of energy
routes there is also a sectarian approach.An August 2012 edition of The Economist rightly stated that Prime
Minister Erdoğan is focused on this topic of sectarianism.

The fact that energy routes to the
Mediterranean must run either through Iran, Iraq and Syria or through Turkey
require Europe’s neutrality. However, from the point of view of the US it is important
to break the anti-American Shiite axis. On this issue the AKP believes that its interests overlap with those of the
US in two areas:firstly, that there should be no other
alternatives to energy routes to the Mediterranean; secondly, it wants to win the
sectarian war on its own terms, with the help of the US and the cooperation of
Saudi Arabia.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face

Experts say that Prime Minister
Erdoğan’s knowledge of history is limited to legends and that he likens himself
to Sultan Selim I, nicknamed “The Grim”.These same experts point out that
this is precisely where the danger lies for Turkey.Shortly after the US invaded Iraq, the
US held the opening of the railway system in the presence of representatives of
different religious sects, and since Iraq is now virtually split into three,
experts say the same thing could happen in Turkey.

The AKP government, which has often stressed
the Syrian people’s right to self-determination, has now reached a point where
it appears to be against the self-determination of the growing Kurdish
population in the north of Syria. However, it has also indicated that, as was
the case for Iraq, it would not be able to oppose a green light from the US to
establish real autonomy there.

Experts also state that just as the
US used Saddam Hussein against Iran and Osama bin Laden against Russia before
eliminating them, the same outcome could also be true for the AKP.

The AKP is willing to make do

If we look at this from Europe’s
point of view, experts state that it is important for Europe to end its
dependency on Russia for natural gas.They agree that it makes little
difference whether the natural gas from Azerbaijan and Central Asia is
delivered through Turkey or through Iran-Iraq-Syria and that the best solution
is for both systems to run in parallel.

It is completely natural for the US
and Europe to protect their interests in the Middle East.However,
there is an obvious danger that those who are trying to fight their own
sectarian war with the help of the US (the AKP) will cut off their nose to
spite their face and make do with a sultanate and caliphate limited to
Istanbul.

What is to be done?

There are different answers to this
question but the situation still merits analysis.In order for Turkey to escape from
these troubles as intact as possible, secular democrats, Alevis and other
ethnic and cultural minorities need to develop their relations with the US.If even a
party like the AKP can develop good relations with the US, then these groups
can (without question) also develop such relations.This analysis could well give rise
to debate.In order to become one of the powers that determine the outcome of this
mess, the US, the EU, Russia and China are all playing the game with the
meticulous calculations of a chess player.However, the winner will not be the
player who thinks just one move ahead, but the one who thinks several moves ahead.Zur Person: Memet Kilic ist Bundestagsabgeordneter für Bündnis 90/Die Grünen und als Rechtsanwalt (Avukat) in der Kanzlei Kilic & Kilic in Heidelberg tätig.